Angels 4, Red Sox 3: Anaheim gets to Koji Uehara for the win

BOSTON — For 14 months, Koji Uehara has been practically unhittable for the Red Sox. His entrance into a game means New England can breathe easy. A Sox lead will be maintained, a tie game will be turned over to the offense the next half-inning. That’

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By
Tim Britton
Posted Aug. 19, 2014 @ 9:37 pm

BOSTON — For 14 months, Koji Uehara has been practically unhittable for the Red Sox. His entrance into a game means New England can breathe easy. A Sox lead will be maintained, a tie game will be turned over to the offense the next half-inning. That’s what Uehara does.

But there is one team that has bedeviled Boston’s automatic right-hander, and the Angels beat him again on Tuesday night. Rhode Island native Chris Iannetta’s two-out double scored Brennan Boesch, who himself had doubled one batter earlier, to lift the visiting Halos to a 4-3 win over the Red Sox. Boston’s dropped three straight.

“A couple of splits that stayed up in the zone,” manager John Farrell said. “That’s the difference.”

That Anaheim’s success against Uehara stands out is a reminder of just how dominant he has been against everyone else. In the last two seasons, though, the Angels have scored four runs off Uehara in just six innings. Uehara’s only allowed 11 other runs since the start of last June.

The Red Sox had a chance to tie it in the ninth, but Huston Street struck out Mike Napoli with two men on.

Boston’s offensive night would have been different had Angels right fielder Kole Calhoun not stolen a three-run homer from Brock Holt in the second inning. It was the most impressive catch by a Fenway visitor at least since Carlos Beltran took a grand slam from David Ortiz last World Series.

Ortiz did slug his first opposite-field home run since the World Series in Tuesday’s first inning. He has 29 on the year.

Allen Webster was one bad inning from a wonderful performance. As it was, he submitted his third straight quality start.

Webster hasn’t yet put it all together in a showcase performance. He hasn’t made the Rays look as silly as Rubby De La Rosa did in May, or carried a no-hitter through six the way Brandon Workman did last summer, or struck out his childhood idol the way Anthony Ranaudo did earlier this month.

Heck, he didn’t have a single Triple-A performance as mesmerizing as Henry Owens’ Pawtucker debut.

But although Webster hasn’t yet produced that kind of epiphany, his last few starts have begun to form a foundational track record. The right-hander is starting to show some consistency, pitch-to-pitch and outing-to-outing.

“It’s good to see him continue to back up outings in a positive way and build some momentum and some confidence in his own right,” said Farrell. “Tonight was another step forward.”

Two of those three straight quality start have now come against baseball’s best team. The command issues that plagued him over his first two major-league starts this season — and dating back through his eight games last year — have hardly made a peep in the last three. He walked just two Angels Tuesday, and he threw 19 first-pitch strikes to 26 batters; at one point, he threw Strike One to a dozen straight hitters.

All the while, he showed off a swing-and-miss changeup and pounded his fastball down in the strike zone to elicit ground-ball outs. Webster generated nine swing-and-misses on the change alone among 15 in all — easily the most he’s had this season on both counts. It was that changeup that helped him work around a David Freese fourth-inning triple — Mookie Betts had misplayed a sinking line drive — when he felled Brennan Boesch with three of them for a critical strikeout.

Betts had saved Webster two innings prior when he pilfered a two-run home run from Freese in the Triangle. Boston’s ersatz center fielder giveth, and he taketh away — especially when Freese is at the plate.

He picked up 10 outs on the ground, including all three in his sixth and final inning: an eight-pitch, 1-2-3 frame that could serve as a paradigm for the pitcher going forward.

“I feel pretty confident right now on the mound,” Webster said. “Just got to keep telling myself to trust my stuff and let them put the ball in play.”

Webster allowed three runs on seven hits in six innings. All three tallies came in a four-batter stretch of the third, in which he surrendered two singles, a double and a triple. All those kind words above don’t mean there isn’t room for improvement, after all.